Little By Little
by itsneonblack
Summary: EVE's crushed. WALL-E didn't get his memory back, and EVE's left to try to get over it. But can she? Can she give up love for the only person who showed what true living meant?  Meanwhile, the humans are solving problems of their own...
1. Prologue

Little by Little…

* * *

Wind whistled through the air. Dust clouds had formed and started to block all vision; the sun shone on them brightly, highlighting the circling specks of dirt. There were no clouds, vegetation, or water – only trash, dust, and earth. In the far distance, traces of human voices could be heard. They sounded excited, or at least enthusiastic. But as far as eye could see, there were no shadows – everything was in extreme exposure to sunlight.

And to EVE, it felt like a hot branding iron trying to cut right through her.

Mechanisms inside her robot body were receding. It couldn't take this kind of idea, this concept, this feeling. It was much too strong…

She didn't believe what was happening. She knew she didn't want to believe… she had never anticipated this kind of thing ever happening.

But right there, plain as day, her love just stared at her with blank eyes. He appeared to not even notice the rising level of dust clouds forming; let alone her.

_Maybe I can try talking the truth into him_, she shakily thought. She repeated his name a few times, gently held his face, but soon started to lose patience. She found herself shouting his name. But there was still no sign of remembrance in his wide, binocular eyes.

Silently stunned, EVE let go of his face. It automatically settled back to its original position.

More time went by. Her shoulders slouched, and she looked down at his hand. She was imagining themselves reuniting, at last holding hands and finally being able to just love each other until the end of their lives.

But this was worse to the point of no comparison. This was worse than death.

She held his hand one last time. Then slowly looking back into his eyes, she hummed to him the song that had become theirs – _It Only Takes a Moment_.

Broken, she raised her face to his level, and gave him a good bye kiss.

She then turned away, despising the feeling of her hand breaking away from his, but also despising the way it had felt before – useless.

What was love if you couldn't pursue it?

That was what WALL-E had been trying to do in the first place. Just pursue his love for her and everyone else. And it had come to this.

Staring at the ground, she quietly drifted away from her love. He didn't move away from where he was. He just continued to stare off into the distance.

And she kept going. She headed into the wind, toward the Axiom and the rest of the humans.

_Goodbye, my precious WALL-E._

* * *

**What do you think? Should I continue? Please review!**


	2. Chapter 1: Evolving

Chapter 1

Laughs and shouts were coming from the landing pad where the _Axiom _sat. Babies were trying to walk and were giggling; men and women got together with their friends and looked around at Earth. Each one seemed fixated with some part of it, and the Captain was having the best time out of everyone. He was starting to dish out commands and suggestions on how to get everything organized.

EVE floated toward the Captain, her face grave. Soon she found herself nearly overcome with "sobs." The Captain immediately walked up to her, albeit still a little bit wobbly, and began to cry as well.

"Rest in peace, WALL-E," Captain McCrea said, sniffing. The rest of the humans stopped where they were and listened too, many of them crying as well. "We are forever in your debt. You had the capability to teach us what living _is_ and finally brought us to Earth." He stopped to take a deep breath, and EVE raised her hands to stop him. He gazed up at her in confusion. "What is it, EVE?"

She paused for a moment, thinking of how she could explain this. "Allivee," she said, and then broke down with more sobs.

"Then why are sad, EVE?" the Captain gently asked.

Without a word, she led them toward WALL-E's house. Everyone stumbled and tripped a bit, but EVE paid no attention. She was just so overcome with grief and shock that she really didn't care so much.

When they were within seeing distance of the huge WALL-E truck, she stopped everyone and pointed to where WALL-E emotionlessly moved back and forth, took trash in without looking, picked it up where it fell, and stacked it. He repeated this ten more times, not even changing direction of his head once.

_So this must have been what I looked like to him before_, EVE thought to herself, broken noises still coming from deep inside her.

The Captain looked fearfully at WALL-E. He looked shaken, to see no expression on the robot's face. EVE was positive he felt just as bad as her, only hers went a little deeper.

Even Hal seemed to be crying, too. He was circling EVE rapidly, emitting loud squeaks. She picked him up and held him up to her face as well, both of them crying together. All humans were either weeping or kept silent. She continued to look at her love for a few more moments, then gathered Hal between her hands delicately, and flew off toward nowhere.


	3. Chapter 2: Searching

Unnamed Chapter (2)

Hal shrieked in surprise as they both flew out toward nowhere in particular. He glanced up at EVE's face, which was either contorted by sobs or eyes narrowed in determination.

When they were a couple hundred miles from the _Axiom_, she set him down in a place that hadn't been touched much by the WALL-Es. Trash just lay messily on the ground, and there were hardly any cubes made.

Hal squeaked at EVE, when she set him down atop of a broken microwave. What are we doing here?

She gave a small, shaky sigh, and pointed to her chest, which immediately showed the green vegetation icon glowing. "Liifeee," she said. "Plants."

Hal immediately gave a nod only a cockroach could do. He understood what she was saying, and instantly started searching.

Fortunately, EVE had the excellence of her vegetation scanner. They needed something to help the cause – food, clean water, plants, anything that proved further that life was continuing on Earth.

After an hour or two, she hadn't found anything and got more than testy. She had never felt this frustrated before; and starting slamming and shooting anything she saw with her gunned arm. She enjoyed the feeling of it at the time, in a sick way, but when she finished and saw all the destruction she made, she felt guilty. This was something she would never have originally done, and surely nothing WALL-E would have done. She would've wanted to follow his example as positively as possible.

Well she messed up the beginning of it, anyway.

She didn't cry anymore. She settled next to Hal on a bench that was split in the middle. It was evening, and soon it would be sunset. She sighed, and looked forward to just shutting down. That way she would remember nothing – at least not for a couple hours.

But the part EVE was in denial about, was that in morning it would just come right back to her again. There really _was_ no running away…

In the morning, WALL-E would still not remember.


	4. Chapter 3: Deteriorating

Unnamed Chapter (3)

Hal and EVE arrived home and announced that they didn't find anything. They would look again tomorrow, and maybe bring some more people with them.

Way back, she was looking forward to sitting next to WALL-E in his truck and falling sleep together. But now she couldn't do that, so she had asked where she was to stay. The Captain found himself gazing at the Axiom, at his quarters where the broken Auto lay.

"Actually, EVE, do you think you could do me a favor?" The Captain had asked.

EVE wearily nodded.

"Auto is still turned off in my quarters. Bad as it sounds, no one wants to go up there and retrieve him. There's no way he could do anything, but we're still kind of in shock of everything, I guess." He paused, and allowed EVE time to think about this. "Do you think you could go up there and grab him, bring him down here, and then I'll find you someplace to rest up there?"

She'd hesitated. Then asked, "Morniinngg?"

The Captain frowned slightly. "Well sure. But where are you going to sleep tonight, then?"

She looked around her, and then shrugged. _I'll find something._

"Well alright then, EVE. I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

She nodded again, and slowly turned toward the open land ahead of her.

"Oh, EVE. One more thing."

Her eyes were half closed. She just looked at Captain McCrea with a blank, unenthusiastic expression on her face.

The Captain's voice was gentle, but also serious. "If you ever need anything call me, ok? If you need to talk I'm here, and I'm sure there are some other robots who would also want to help you."

She looked toward the rejects. They were busy helping people build makeshift huts, some looking excited, others looked depressed.

M-O stood back and supervised it all. When he saw EVE looking at him, he just nodded sheepishly and waved.

She didn't have the energy to wave back; she just blinked.

M-O looked embarrassed and pretended to run after a patch of unclean trash.

EVE knew she would have laughed, had everything been alright.

But it wasn't. She turned back to the Captain and promised him she would.

He looked very relieved, but concern still brought a certain glare to his eyes. "Thank you EVE," he said. "See you in the morning."

She just nodded once, then turned around and left.


End file.
